


All of my Memories Keep You Near

by sky_reid



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Clint Needs a Hug, F/M, Future Fic, Identity, Loneliness, Memories, Songfic, identity mindfuck, living under a false identity, this is how i deal with the stress of the us elections, trust the (non-existent) warnings, trust the tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-08
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-18 05:10:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_reid/pseuds/sky_reid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If our memories define us, then there's only one thing Clint doesn't want to forget - Natasha.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of my Memories Keep You Near

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for mature themes.
> 
> Title from Within Temptation's _Memories_ , lyrics (in original form) and inspiration from Rise Against's _Savior_.
> 
> First time writing this character _and_ pairing, and only second time writing in this fandom. Not sure if I'm excited or nervous xD
> 
> First of many (planned) Clint/Natasha song-ficlets.

 

_All of my Memories Keep You Near_

 

_It kills me not to know this but I've all but just forgotten_

_what the color of her eyes were and her scars or how she got them;_

_as the telling signs of age rain down, a single tear is dropping_

_through the valleys of an aging face that this world has forgotten_

 

Clint Barton is long dead. He was, ironically, shot by a sniper while on a mission in Africa. He was alone, his body was never recovered and he didn't have a funeral. There was no family to inform. It was the kind of end he deserved, one befitting a spy.

 

Clint Barton is long dead. All the people he was supposed to kill, all the threats he was supposed to deal with are now someone else's problems. His file in the S.H.I.E.L.D. database has been sealed and the hard copy of it now reads _deceased_ in large red letters on the front. Someone else now uses his codename.

 

Clint Barton is long dead. But that's all right, because the people he used to work with are too, for the most part anyway.

 

Clint Barton is long dead. Mike Masters, however, isn't.

 

Mike Masters is an overly suspicious accountant who works for the legal department of a large, privately owned company. Mike Masters moved to Indiana more than a decade ago after his wife and daughter died in a fire in their home in Kentucky, and he just couldn't bring himself to walk down the same street again. Mike Masters drinks coffee, has a dog and can hit the recycle bin with a piece of paper from across the room. Mike Masters is a quiet, private person, so much so, that people who live on the street that used to be his address don't even remember him; he has no friends and the only people who have ever seen his apartment are the delivery workers who bring his groceries.

 

Mike Masters is the same age Clint Barton would be, were he still alive. Mike Masters looks a lot like Clint Barton did, only older. Mike Masters has a voice eerily reminiscent of Clint Barton's, just slightly deeper and rougher, because Mike Masters smokes and Clint Barton didn't. Mike Masters is a lot like what Clint Barton would be had he survived that fated trip all those years ago.

 

But Mike Masters isn't Clint Barton.

 

Because for all that Mike Masters looks like he could be Clint Barton's twin brother, for all that he doesn't trust anyone and carries a gun he doesn't, strictly speaking, need, for all that he has the kind of uncanny aim that would easily win him a game of darts if he had someone to play it with, Mike Masters doesn't remember the things Clint Barton would never be able to forget.

 

Mike Masters doesn't remember what a custom-made bow with a specially designed quiver looks like and he doesn't know the feel of a tight bowstring under his fingertips, because he's never shot an arrow. He doesn't know what it's like to kill someone, to see the life drain from their face, the spark leave their eyes, to be the one responsible for that, because Mike Masters only shoots at practice targets and even that only when he really needs to blow off some steam. He's only been to the circus once, when he took his then-girlfriend, soon-to-be-wife on a date which turned out to be a disaster because she hated clowns. He doesn't have any siblings, his parents died of old age only a few years ago and his dreams of becoming a superhero were limited to his early childhood. He doesn't speak any foreign languages because everything he's ever had to say in one was _Muchas gracias, quédate con el cambio_ and he doesn't have memories from Cairo or Bangkok or Kinshasa or Copenhagen or Budapest, because he's never been to any of those places.

 

But Mike Masters is a perfectly ordinary guy – okay, so he has his quirks, but who doesn't? – so maybe it's for the better that he doesn't remember the dingy old room in a nameless hotel on a one-way street near Erzsebet Bridge, where the hum of traffic is constant and the cold light of morning sneaks past the curtains much too late. Maybe it's better that it wasn't him in that room, tangled in the sheets, covered in sweat and dirt, too tired to shower, his clothes on the floor, blood, from that one smart person every security team has, that one who almost got to him, but then didn't, drying on them. And it's definitely better that it wasn't Mike Masters who stretched out and over the other person in that bed, the gorgeous redhead with fire in her eyes and determination in her every move, the kind of woman whose name Mike Masters doesn't and should never know, but the kind of woman no man could ever get over or forget.

 

(The truth is, Clint _is_ forgetting. And it's not the kind of forgetting that comes with Alzheimer's or a tumor, the kind that just plain wipes days or months or years from his brain, no, it's the irreversible kind of forgetting that comes with time and age. It's watercolour instead of technicolour, a blurry image instead of sharp lines, smells and sights and sounds that are just short of being right, disconnected moments and images that are _just_ out of reach. It's that awful feeling of knowing the word, but not quite being able to say it; only this time, it's the most important part of Clint's life that's beginning to fade. He still remember the way the room felt like it was going to suffocate them, he still remembers the paleness of Natasha's skin, the black lace on her bra, the unladylike snores by his ear. He still remembers that he loved her, and how fiercely and how passionately and how exhaustively.

 

When he thinks about her, he remembers her strength and perseverance, the guilt, the quick thinking that always got her out of trouble. But when he tries to picture her, it's like trying to remember a dream: there's endless soft skin littered with scars of various shapes and sizes – once he knew them all, knew the stories behind them, but now he can only remember what the one on her hip felt like under his fingers; there's red hair, waves of it curling over her shoulders, tickling his face – he used to know the smell of her shampoo better than that of his own cologne, but now all he knows is that it was vaguely like citrus fruits; her eyes, so expressive and yet so well trained not to be – he used to look into them every night, search them for something even he didn't understand, but now he can't pick their colour out of a palette.

 

Clint is forgetting; slowly but surely, time is catching up with him, eating him from the inside out until all that remains is a man of similar physical characteristics as him, who has nothing of what makes him Clint Barton. Clint is forgetting and it's killing him. Or rather, it would be. If he weren't already dead.)

 

Mike Masters doesn't know any of this. Mike Masters is an accountant who has an unusual fondness for guns. Mike Masters lost his wife, Emily, and daughter, Amanda, in a fire almost fourteen years ago. Mike Masters has never left the States. Mike Masters is not Clint Barton.

 

(This is what Clint tells himself in front of the mirror every morning.)

 

Mike Masters doesn't know any of this. Clint Barton can't remember anymore.

 

(But that's okay. Because Clint Barton is long dead.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :)


End file.
